Biden Can’t Decide What Counts as a ‘Democracy’

meixixi

[color=var(--posttitletextcolor)]Biden Can’t Decide What Counts as a ‘Democracy’

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Democracy is on the ropes, and President Biden says he wants to fight back. He plans to call a summit of democracies and to mobilize a broad coalition of democratic governments to contain the rise of authoritarian powers like China and Russia. That appears eminently sensible. It also resonates with the progressive moment in the United States, as many Americans are determined to repair their democracy, making it fairer and more inclusive.

But there’s a snag: To succeed in building a democratic coalition against the authoritarians, the United States will need to jettison its monopoly on defining who counts as “democratic.” If it doesn’t, it will end up with either a coalition that is too limited to serve America’s strategic interests or a coalition making Washington look indefensibly hypocritical.

So, Washington has a choice. It should either hypocritically pretend that for the purpose of containing China, countries like India and Turkey are democracies or rhetorically decouple its efforts to contain China and Russia from its efforts to revive global democracy. I suggest the Biden administration take the second road. In our social-media-saturated world, hypocrisy is the ultimate vice. And while the legitimacy of democratic activists comes from speaking truth to power, the international legitimacy of democratic governments comes from speaking truth about power.